Comics, illustration show splendor of horses at Equine Museum

YOKOHAMA, Japan — The Equine Museum of Japan has kicked off a unique exhibition of artwork focusing on horses, exploring old and modern Japan through equine-related comics and illustration.

Titled “Art of Horses: Cartoon X Comics,” the exhibition features artwork beginning with a 19th-century cartoon magazine and running through modern manga.

The museum is located on the former site of the Negishi racecourse, the first Western-style horse track in the country. It is some distance away from Tokaido road, the main travel route that connected Edo (present-day Tokyo) with Kyoto. It was built away from the main road because of concern over a possible recurrence of the so-called Namamugi incident in 1862, in which samurai warriors assaulted Britons during the parade of a daimyo clan.

The racetrack was once proclaimed as a symbol of the government’s Westernization policy, along with the Roku-meikan hall in Tokyo, during the late 1800s and early 1900s.

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A major attraction at the exhibition is the large number of back issues of The Japan Punch, which was first published in 1862 by Charles Wirgman, who came to Japan as a correspondent from Britain.

He continued publishing the monthly magazine for 25 years, mainly focusing on equine-related issues.

One of the illustrations caricatures a custom in which a horseman, called “betto” in Japanese, runs alongside a horse. The custom apparently looked strange in the eyes of Westerners. The cartoon’s original caption read: “The head betto or the right man in the right place.” Another illustration made fun of a Westerner with a big body riding a Japanese horse.

In 1905, illustrator-reporter Rakuten Kitazawa published a cartoon magazine titled Tokyo Puck, in which he criticized politicians using horse-related metaphors despite facing criticism.

“Private-sector critics regard the government as a slow-running horse, while the government regards the critics as curiosity seekers, or yajiuma (horse) in Japanese,” he said in one issue.

Kitazawa gradually broadened the scope of his topics, drawing on themes other than horses, according to the museum.

After World War II, horses gradually became the subject of modern graphic art. Such well-known manga artists as Osamu Tezuka (“Astro Boy”), Jiro Tsunoda and Go Nagai created comics imagery about horses.

Through observing artwork by such manga artists, visitors to the special exhibition will have the opportunity to see the evolution of manga in Japan. The exhibition will run through Dec. 1.

Permanent exhibits at the museum are also a must-see, including such unusual items as fossils and miniature models that shows the evolution of horses as well as a device that can determine a horse’s mood based on their ear movements.

What may be the most unusual exhibit at the museum is a device that can measure people’s physical strength in terms of horsepower — one horsepower is equal to the power used to pull 75 kilograms over one meter in one second.

A digitalized measure of horsepower is calculated by pulling a U-shaped bar of the measuring device.

“A U.S. marine had 0.8 horsepower, and singer Gackt had 0.7 horsepower,” said Fumihiko Murai, a curator at the museum. This reporter turned out to have only 0.6 horsepower.